Would you like to learn how to create suspense and build on it? Andrew Pyper teaches you how to pick up that hot potato and never let it go in The Guardians.
The Guardians by Andrew Pyper is a haunted house story. The Thurman house keeps dark secrets within its walls--but for how long? They want to get out.
Buy this book
Published by Doubleday Canada
an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada
Published in 2011
Forty-year-old Trevor is watching his life slip away as Parkinson's claims his body. He's alone but he wasn't always. In 1984, Trevor and his three friends Randy, Ben, and Carl played hockey for the Grimshaw Guardians. Flash forward twenty-four years to 2008 and Ben's death brings Trevor back to his hometown of Grimshaw, Ontario. It brings him face-to-face with that which haunts him--the Thurman house and his once girlfriend Sarah. One offers him death, the other life--which will Trevor choose?
To help Trevor cope with Parkinson's, doctors advise him to keep a journal. He takes this advice but he doesn't write about Parkinson's. He recounts the events that transpired in the winter of 1984 when he was sixteen. This dual timeline kept me on the edge of my seat.
In fact, if I were, to sum up, The Guardians in one word that word would be suspenseful.
New release by Andrew Pyper--The Residence
Virtual Reading...
Wednesday, October 28
just in time for Halloween
Larry
a ghost story
November on this blog...
Sunday, November 1
Short Story: A Bedtime Story
Leanne Dyck
A sweet story about a child's bedtime ritual with her farmer father.
Sunday, November 8
Book Review: How to Pronounce Knife (short story collection)
Souvankham Thammavongsa
Nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize
Sunday, November 15
Short Story: Is She Me?
Leanne Dyck
An anthem for women of a certain age.
Sunday, November 22
Book Review: All We Left Behind (historical fiction)
Danielle R Graham
A war-time romance between Chidori and Hayden--set on a remote island off Canada's west coast (Mayne Island)
Sunday, November 29
Book Review: MASH (historical fiction)
Richard Hooker
This novel about doctors servicing in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean war became the popular TV show MASH starring Alan Alda.
Sharing my author's journey...
Thanks to the Vancouver Writers Festival, I had an opportunity to visit with Oliver Jeffers.
'On this pale blue dot, everyone you love, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives... Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there, on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam'
Word count: 5,742 /40,000
This week was all about planning and filling in the blanks. For example, naming some of my key secondary characters. Often
with me, the names of characters take a long time to find. I'm not sure why that it is. My protagonist's name was right there the minute I started writing my manuscript. I've even tried to change her name but it just didn't sit right. She had a name; she told me what it was, and I had no choice, I had to use it. I guess other characters are just a little shyer or more reserved. It takes more effort to get to know them.
How about you? Do character names come easily to you or do you have work to find them?
Thank you for helping me to find this article...
